Digital video broadcast satellite (DVB-S) antennas are deigned to communicate with one or more satellites to simultaneously receive and broadcast a large number of television channels and related information. An antenna horn cooperates with a reflector to focus its reception pattern on the location of a desired satellite for efficient utilization of the energy beam. Generally, larger antenna horns can focus the reception pattern more narrowly, while smaller horns requiring less material are less expensive to manufacture. Allowing the antenna horn to focus its reception pattern more narrowly also reduces the size of the reflector, which further reduces the size and cost of the antenna.
In some cases, multiple antenna horns are built into a single housing referred to as a low noise block (LNB) amplifier, which focus their reception patterns on a common reflector. Utilizing a single reflector for multiple antenna horns provides efficiency while limiting the size of the horns that can be physically accommodated. Multi-horn blocks are well suited to reflector systems designed to communicate with closely spaced satellites where the adjacent horns need to be positioned very close together. Placing multiple antennas very close together presents design challenges, such as unwanted signal coupling or interference between the closely spaced adjacent horns. This interference degrades performance, creating the need for improved directivity and narrowing of the antenna reception pattern in order to improve isolation between the adjacent horns. A need therefore exists for design techniques for reducing the size and improving the performance of antenna horns.